Yostivanich

I wish I could favorite an entire set on Flickr, because this would be favor­ited in a second.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime vil­lains behind the mess we’re in were Rea­gan and his cir­cle of advis­ers — men who for­got the lessons of America’s last great finan­cial cri­sis, and con­demned the rest of us to repeat it.”

“In dis­cus­sions with pub­lish­ers at the annual Book­Expo con­ven­tion in New York over the week­end, Google sig­naled its intent to intro­duce a pro­gram by that would enable pub­lish­ers to sell dig­i­tal ver­sions of their newest books direct to con­sumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seek­ing to con­trol the e-book mar­ket with the ver­sions it sells for its Kin­dle read­ing device.”

“The hosts of “Morn­ing Joe” on MSNBC seem to drink Star­bucks every day. Joe Scar­bor­ough, the show’s name­sake and co-host, sips Frap­puc­ci­nos on cam­era so often that some view­ers have won­dered whether it is a form of prod­uct place­ment, paid for by the cof­fee com­pany. Start­ing Mon­day, it will be.”

“What hap­pened next is the sub­ject of four sep­a­rate inquiries by dif­fer­ent over­sight bod­ies. But some facts are undis­puted. A mem­ber of the pub­lic, 47-year-old Ian Tom­lin­son, is dead. A police offi­cer faces pos­si­ble mur­der charges. More than 180 pro­test­ers, some suf­fer­ing from con­cus­sions, bro­ken bones and other injuries, have for­mally accused the police of exces­sive force and unpro­voked assaults.” Mean­while not a sin­gle police offi­cer was injured by the protesters.

“We used to think it was enough to make broad­band acces­si­ble every­where. That’s no longer good enough. We now need to make sure that every­one actu­ally has broad­band in his or her res­i­dence and busi­ness. Every­one! (vol­un­tary cave dweller excepted).” I agree.

“Handley’s guilty plea makes him the first to be con­victed under that law for pos­sess­ing car­toon art, with­out any evi­dence that he also col­lected or viewed gen­uine child pornog­ra­phy. He faces a max­i­mum sen­tence of 15 years in prison.” So in other words, fac­ing jail time for col­lect­ing art, okay then.

“In his remarks on Mon­day, Mr. Obama is expected to argue that any alter­na­tive to his plan would be worse, and that a liq­ui­da­tion of G.M. — the only other real option — would send the unem­ploy­ment rate soar­ing over 10 per­cent and would radi­ate dam­age through­out the econ­omy.” One chap­ter closes another opens.

“Bad infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture causes the major­ity of out­right user fail­ures and isn’t improv­ing at the rate of other Web usabil­ity issues. To deter­mine why, I’ve iden­ti­fied 10 long-term sore thumbs that together cost web­sites bil­lions of dol­lars each year.”

“Now, using these guide­lines, and build­ing on the expe­ri­ence of much more knowl­edge­able type gurus, I have com­piled a list of font stacks that will both open up more font pos­si­bil­i­ties for web design­ers, and hope­fully offer more appro­pri­ate sub­sti­tutes:” A bet­ter font stack than the one you are used to.

“Sound famil­iar? It should. Much of the ratio­nale used for anti-miscegenation laws mir­rors that cur­rently used to jus­tify oppo­si­tion to gay mar­riage. Much of the reli­gious gib­ber­ish uttered by those big­ots is now used by mod­ern anti-gay big­ots.” His­tory keeps repeating.

“Researchers have for the first time found inher­ited genetic fac­tors which raise the risk of tes­tic­u­lar cancer.”

“Mus­lims should not use weapons of mass destruc­tion and pos­sess them only as a deter­rent, a top Islamic cleric says. Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa said using such weapons would vio­late Islamic teach­ings as Mus­lims as well as non-Muslims could be killed.”

“Cuba has agreed to resume talks with Wash­ing­ton on immi­gra­tion by Cubans to the US, the state depart­ment says.” More pos­i­tive news from this area of US for­eign policy.

“The Israeli cab­i­net has rejected a con­tro­ver­sial pro­posal to require Israeli cit­i­zens to take an oath of loy­alty to the Jew­ish state.” Stu­pid ultra-nationalist platforms.

“There are many rea­sons why pas­sen­ger rail is the unwanted stepchild of trans­port pol­icy in the USA; a lack of suit­able track sig­nal­ing, pri­or­ity given to freight over pas­sen­ger ser­vices, routes laid out in the 1930s and ear­lier rather than between cur­rent cen­tres of pop­u­la­tion and com­merce, and so on. But despite under­stand­ing why, I find it really strange that in this day and age, a crit­i­cal chunk of the USA’s infra­struc­ture barely rises to the level of third world quality.”

“A promi­nent US abor­tion doc­tor has been shot dead at a church in the city of Wichita, Kansas. Sixty-seven year-old George Tiller was killed just after 1000 (1500 GMT) at the Ref­or­ma­tion Lutheran Church. The gun­man, described as a white man, fled in a car, but offi­cials say a sus­pect is now in cus­tody. Dr Tiller, one of the few US doc­tors who per­formed so-called late-term abor­tions, had been vil­i­fied by anti-abortionists in the US. His clinic — called Women’s Health Care Ser­vices — had often been the site of demon­stra­tions, and he had been shot and wounded by an assailant 16 years ago.” Extrem­i­nism of any type is wrong.

“Over the next day or two, you’ll see all the pro-life groups putting out sim­i­lar state­ments — that they had absolutely noth­ing to do with the mur­der. They didn’t pull the trig­ger, but it’s the mind­set they put peo­ple in that is the prob­lem here. When one of their fol­low­ers snaps, peo­ple like Tiller get killed.”

Google play­ing Street View in an semi-immerseve nvironment.

I have to agree with a lot of these, though not all.

“Book chal­lenges — writ­ten com­plaints, filed with a pub­lic or school library, request­ing that mate­ri­als be removed or restricted — increased nation­ally from 420 in 2007 to 513 in 2008. The Library Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica recently released its list of the 10 most-challenged books of 2008, which includes New York Times best-seller The Kite Run­ner and the teen drama series-turned-TV show Gos­sip Girl.” Stop cen­sor­ing peo­ple, it does absolutely nothing.

“To pump music out to their dance floors, Aus­tralian clubs used to have to pay record com­pa­nies and artists a nom­i­nal 7 Aus­tralian cents in roy­al­ties per guest, per night. Under a recent copy­right set­tle­ment, that rate has risen to 50 cents per cus­tomer, and it is set to jump to 1.05 dol­lars, or 84 U.S. cents, in a few years.” At least it’s not per song.

“The scale of the war dam­age to the main city in the Swat val­ley has become clear, as fears are expressed about the human­i­tar­ian sit­u­a­tion in the region.” BBC report­ing that there is “wide­spread damage.”

“Jen­nifer Pre­ston has been appointed the first Social Media Edi­tor of the New York Times. It has come to this; the flag­ship insti­tu­tion of tra­di­tional jour­nal­ism now has an edi­tor level posi­tion ded­i­cated to new media.”

“That brings us back to Google: today, it is Google which is dri­ving web stan­dards for­ward. That is why we at Zoho are firmly aligned with them, even if they are our pri­mary com­peti­tor. We believe in an open web, there is plenty of oppor­tu­nity for all of us. Could Google abuse its posi­tion? Well, I am sure they under­stand karma!” Why karma mat­ters to the online community.